Reşat Nuri Güntekin
The Green Night
Original Title : Yeşil Gece
Novel
The last years of the Ottoman Empire and the early years of the modern republic. Sahin's father is determined to trainhis son as a religious
fundamentalist and sends him to an Islamic school. However, Sahin
becomes the opposite, loses his faith in the mission of his father and joins a secular school. After graduation he is a determined revolutionary modernist and decides to teach in a small town well known for its conservatism and anti-revolutionary position. Not surprisingly the locals give him a hard time. In the end, following the nationwide victory of the revolutionary forces, modernism succeeds in the town, but the locals do not stop working against him and talking behind his back; he has to visit Ankara to convince the modern secular state that he is not a conservative anti-revolutionary!
Selected reviews
After the publication of ‘Green Night’ 1928, we can see a significant change in Reşat Nuri Güntekin’s novels. Now we see a writer who uses lengthy descriptions to highlight social problems and has become a fully fledged social realism novelist. It’s as if his first novels were written for a wide audience to tell them about himself and his underlying problems. Tahir Alangu
Rumour has it that Ataturk one day said to one of his favourite novelists, Reşat Nuri Güntekin, “Write me a novel that criticizes fundamentalism.” Green Night is the fruit of this wish… I don’t know if this is true, whether Reşat Nuri Güntekin fulfilled this wish or just did it to please himself. Both could be true. Reşat Nuri Güntekin was an enemy of reactionary attitudes and anachronistic order. He was opposed to blinkered vision. Oktay Akbal, Cumhuriyet Gazetesi
Reşat Nuri Güntekin in a world isolated from social realities tries to tell of social truths and using chosen events and people he lambastes fanaticism and defends development through education.
Fethi Naci
With the publication of Green Nights in 1928, Reşat Nuri Güntekin reaches the peak of his profession as a novelist. Refik Durbaş
Following Reşat Nuri Güntekin’s ‘Green Night’, Kuyucaklı Yusuf is the 2nd novel of Turkish literature that spotlights the realities of life in a small town. Kemal Ateş
When everybody was under the influence of ‘The Wren’, ‘Green Night’ affected me profoundly. I still think ‘Green Night’ was Reşat Nuri Güntekin’s most important novel. Ayşe Kilimci
